Since all eyes interested in Catholic LGBT issues have been on the Vatican lately because of Pope Francis’ recent comments, a sharp news writer in London had decided to look at the Vatican and see just how gay it might be.

No, he was not talking about the infamous “gay lobby” that supposedly operates in the hallowed halls. He was talking about the art that adorns the famous buildings, and is part of the cultural heritage of the Catholic Church.

Jonathan Jones, art critic for The Guardian, set out to remind the Catholic world that the images which cover the walls and ceilings of various Roman churches and Vatican salons, chapels, and galleries, were, in fact, painted by artists who were gay men. In an article entitled, “Holy smoke! Take the Catholic church gay art tour,” he suggests that if Pope Francis wants to learn more about gay people, he should just walk around and examine the art:

“In the Vatican museum he should contemplate Leonardo da Vinci’s St Jerome in the Desert. An ascetic sits in anguished thought in a rocky wilderness in this unfinished masterpiece. It is a great, introspectively spiritual work of religious art whose creator was well known for his love of young men. Leonardo surrounded himself with good-looking assistants and painted a subversively gay icon of male beauty, his bronzed Saint John the Baptist. When da Vinci was in his 20s, he was formally accused of sodomy.”

Next stop is Michelangelo:

“. . . the Pope might walk into the Pauline Chapel, to look upon Michelangelo’s frescoes there. This chapel is in a private part of the Apostolic Palace not open to the public, but I don’t think the Pope would find entry difficult. There, looking at the suffering of the saints, he might consider how Michelangelo courageously expressed his love for men, even as he created some of the most eloquent art of the church.”

Jones links to another Guardian article, which describes Michelangelo’s sexuality in more depth:

Michelangelo’s “Martyrdom of Saint Peter”

“In the 1530s, when he was in his late 50s, he finally fell in love for real. The object of his desire was Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, a handsome teenager from a noble Roman family. He gave Tommaso presents of poems and drawings – in one of the drawings, Jupiter has taken the form of an eagle to carry off the youth Ganymede.

“The poetry Michelangelo composed for Tommaso has a true fire. It is viscerally real, acutely sensitive: “This, lord, has hit me, since I laid eyes on you. / A bitter-sweet, yes-and-no mood …” He claims that his love is spiritual, that only people with dirty minds think he is up to anything illicit. Yet he is acutely sensual in his longings as he dreams of resting in his lover’s arms, or of being the prisoner of an armed knight – a pun on the name Cavalieri.”

His final example is Caravaggio:

“. . . perhaps the Pope might visit the Roman church of San Luigi dei Francesi to look on this master’s paintings of St Matthew. But the demons of desire cannot be suppressed. The naked male flesh in Caravaggio’s paintings tells its own story. By the time Caravaggio came to Rome in the 1590s, Leonardo and Michaelangelo – not to mention the aptly named Italian painter Il Sodoma – had already blazed a gay trail through the art of the Holy City.”

I would add that the pope doesn’t have to go back centuries to appreciate the ways that the church has benefited from the artistic gifts of LGBT people. He just needs to look into any parish church where LGBT people worship, and he will see many contributions to music, environment, liturgy, and decoration. If he looks closer, he will see the many other contributions that LGBT people bring to the church: a sense of justice, an appreciation of the connection between sexuality and spirituality, a deep concern for appreciating God’s love for every individual. He will see these gifts alive in ministries of education, worship, social justice, and the works of mercy.

In his so far brief papacy, Pope Francis has already exhibited more awareness of gay people than any previous pope. May the art which surrounds him in his new home inspire him to find the beauty of LGBT lives of faith as they are lived in our church today.

Excellent post, especially the concluding part on the artistic contributions of LGBT people today. A pastor not particularly supportive of LGBT issues admitted that if all LGBT Catholics got together one weekend and decided not to go to church, many parishes would end up seriously deficient, or paralyzed, in everything from their music programs to needed volunteers. He went on to say how extremely grateful he is for all their participation in the life of his parish (he especially noted music), and how he and many other pastors worry about efforts by certain bishops to force them to do what they know is not only wrong but would in fact damage parish life.
Art is offered to the glory of our Creator, not to any creatures, even if they are members of the hierarchy.

I think the pope might also want to take into account Michelangelo’s muscular and heroic architecture (St Peter’s and Il Campidoglio) and his life in sculpture (the four Pietas, Julius II’s Tomb with the Moses, et al.) in order to assess the enormous contribution of this one particular “homosexual” artist to the Church. Donatello, the great Florentine sculptor before Michelangelo, is also believed to be “gay” — one look at his David in the Bargello in Florence might give all the proof one needed.

And what about Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni from the 17th century — two more lifelong “bachelors.” Their religious art dominated much of their times with Cardinals vying for their work just as they had vied for Caravaggio’s. .

And what about all the ancient classical Greek and Roman sculpture in the Vatican, so much of it a celebration of male beauty. Need I mention the multiple statues of Hadrian and his beloved Antinuous scattered liberally throughout the Papal Sculpture Collection and usually placed in the most important places !!!!

Wake up, you homophobic prelates! Pope Julius II Della Rovere (1503-13) knew what he wanted in the Renaissance for the Pope’s new building and his famous art collection — the very best of the past and the present. He didn’t care one fig leaf that some of the sculptures depicted homosexual emperors and their lovers. Nor did he care that Michelangelo was moody and temperamental and ate his meals with the musclebound men who carved out his marble in the mountains of Carrara.for the pope’s colossal Tomb in Rome and intended for St Peter’s itself. Nor should the feeble Roman Curia of today’s RCC care that they are surrounded by the great art of homosexuals. In fact, one of their newest residences affords ground floor space with the BIGGEST GAY SAUNA in all of Europe. Who are they kidding?????

And didn’t Josef Ratzinger (aka Benedict XVI) take his “most particular favorite” — Georg Ganswein — into the highest reaches of the Vatican — both in public and private — and make him an Archbishop as a sign of his singular necessity ???? Benedict has done no less than Hadrian himself.

Nor have many of the previous popes who commissioned the gloriously nude River Gods and burly Neptunes (as evidenced in the Fontana di Trevi) who are at the core of so many monumental Papal Fountains that decorate the city of Rome and elsewhere in Italy for their Great Glory !!!!

So why all the endless “official” papal hysteria over homosexuality? The lady doth protest too much. Homosexuals and their sexual preferences have been in the Church (and in Antiquity as well) from the beginning and IRONICALLY maybe more so now than ever before. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.